


Playing Catch and Hoping For the Best

by TheSubtextMachine



Series: My Sylena Tumblr Prompts [6]
Category: One Day at a Time (TV 2017)
Genre: Gen, father figures can be better than actual fathers??, fighting :(, vaguely Victor's POV until the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-06-27 05:20:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15678843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSubtextMachine/pseuds/TheSubtextMachine
Summary: “Fluffy, feels Prompt: Victor makes a snide comment about Schneider Her father has no right to attack the man who was there when he wasn’t so she defends Schneider rather vigorously. Schneider overhears it all.”what it says on the tin, folks





	Playing Catch and Hoping For the Best

The room already feels awful: so thick with tension and discomfort, that when Victor says it, it only feels inevitable. They’re on the couch, talking in barbs while a football game plays on the background, and Victor keeps throwing cursory glances at the glowing screen while trying to listen into the vague sounds of sizzling and gossip from the adjoining room.

“At least she’s had that… clown to keep her company,” he says, and Elena’s forehead burns hot. They’ve been trading backhanded snipes while waiting for Penelope to come back from the kitchen, but this one feels like the first true affront to Elena.

“Clown?” 

She knows who he’s talking about. She knows that Victor knew Schneider when he still had frosted tips, and when he took a week off work to mourn the fact that his ska band broke up. There was no other lovable dumbass he could possibly be referring, but Elena still wanted to hear it from him. 

“That landlord! I know that they’ve become close, or whatever, and I’m glad that she’s had someone to be around-”

“Because you left. Don’t forget that part,” interrupts Elena, and Victor knows that fire in her eyes, he knows it like he knows himself, but he keeps going.

“It’s just that I think he’s not the smartest man around, who can blame me,” says Victor, putting his hands up and looking everywhere but at Elena. He hopes that she takes his noncommittal tone to heart and just drops it.

“He doesn’t have to be the smartest man on earth, because unlike you, he’s actually _here_ ,” she says, and Victor realizes for the nth time that night that Elena doesn’t just drop grievances. She lives in them and tears them apart, he knows this, and he’s known this for forever, and all he wants is for this to stop. 

“Well-” he starts, trying to cover up his mistakes, but he doesn’t get the time.

“And even if you were here, I think I’d choose that- that clown over you any day. Because while you’re too busy being obsessed about what other people may think about you, he’s actually thinking about who he is as a person. He spends all his time trying to be kind, Victor, and if that makes him a clown I don’t know what-”

“I didn’t mean it like that. God, Elena! You can never just leave things alone,” he sighs, and this makes Elena propel herself out of her spot on the couch. She starts walking with unforgiving, staccato steps, and VIctor can see her fuming even though her back is turned. 

“You didn’t raise me to leave things alone,” she says, and the volume is low but it hits VIctor right in the heart Elena refuses to acknowledge. His lips set into a grimace, his eyes flutter closed on the impact of it, and memories flit behind his eyelids. Memories of telling little Elena not to give up, not to take shit. If there’s anything to be said about Elena, it’s that she knows how to hit harder and with more efficiency than anyone he’s ever met.

“Whatever,” he says, trying to shake it off physically and mentally, “let’s just talk about something that doesn’t make us fight. We have things in common, Elena! You can’t just shut me out completely like this, like we can never be anything to each other anymore-”

“Fine. You know what we both like?” she asks, and the words are harsh on her tongue, and Victor knows that he’s being lead in a false direction. He still tries, still wracks his brain for something that they used to do together, that they used to understand about each other before everything so gracefully went to shit. 

“Video Ga-” he begins, before the inevitable happened.

“Not giving up.”

“I should’ve expected that.”

“Yeah, you should’ve. You talk shit about the closest thing I have to a father, and you better expect that I’m not going to give up. Schneider has been here for me, has been accepting of me and kind and everything I need, and you have no right to talk about him like that when you’ve abandoned me and let me down time after time after time,” she says, and the emotions that she has grown to love spring to her eyes. 

She stands strongly, her feet planted on the living room floor as the cold air in the room turns sour. Victor doesn’t have it in him to form any kind of rebuttal, and he shifts around in the couch for a couple of seconds before hoisting himself up, turning his face away from Elena, because all the sudden she’s way too real for him to cope with it all.

This isn’t the Elena of his sugar coated memories, of his grand dreams about her future (that, naturally, had a husband and kids in store). This is Elena in flesh and blood, tears threatening to fall out and eyebrows furrowed a bit, and it freaks him out. It so utterly freaks him out that he starts stomping towards the door, his blood beating so loudly that he cannot hear if Elena sighs or screams or simply collapses with frustration.

What he hears instead, as he pulls the door open, is a squawk and a crash at his feet. His eyes go closed because someone has fallen right on him, as if they had their ear to the door. Victor scrambles away, and opens his eyes to see Schneider, gangly and spider-like on the floor.

“Schneider what-” Elena starts, and he begins speaking as he collects himself off of the Alvarez floor in an awkward,teenager-esque way.

“Sorry for eavesdropping! It’s just that Pen told me that there’d be food, and you know how much I… and then there was an argument so I didn’t want to intrude, but then I heard my name and what is a guy to do but-”

Something fond, something familial passes between Elena and Schneider as he stops in his tracks, nothing really prompting it. This seems to break Victor somehow, because he has to close his eyes to keep the anger in check.

“Bye Schneider. Nice to see you,” Victor says shortly, trying with all his might not to storm or explode, and he leaves the apartment, banging the door shut behind him.

This just leaves Schneider and Elena, standing awkwardly in the Alvarez living room, feeling so insanely _young_ that they don’t fully understand it.

“Thanks, by the way,” Schneider says, and when Elena smiles at it, he feels the urge to ruffle her hair and take her to go play catch or something.

(Schneider doesn’t know what a father really does, he never had a good one, and he never really saw a real one that he wanted to emulate, so he was going out on a limb. Catch was a father thing, right?)

“You’re welcome,” Elena says, oblivious to his thought process about catch and being a dad. Elena instead felt a bit at peace. Vulnerable, of course, but at peace.

Everything would be okay, she thought, watching Schneider in anticipation as he went on some kind of face journey that ended with a visibly made decision.

“Wanna go play catch?”

**Author's Note:**

> back at it again y'all.... I have approximately 1 million tabs of wips rn so forgive me for being so slow at requests. If you liked this and want to leave me a request of your own, I've got an open ask box on tumblr @thesubtextmachine! If you just liked this one in general, please feel free to leave me a comment!
> 
> Love you guys! Stay cool!


End file.
